


Memories Alight

by thecaryatid



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Little plot, godhood and mortality, in which sothis dies and is reborn, is this a character study?, lots of imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25520593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecaryatid/pseuds/thecaryatid
Summary: Sothis expects oblivion. There has only ever been one goddess, one being who cloaked divine power in a living form, and why wouldn’t she expect crushing nonexistence? She hungers and tires as the humans do. She bleeds and breathes, cries and sleeps; she ought to die. Separated from herself, bone and blood and heart reforged as weapons, she ought to die.Or: an odd little fic about Sothis's death and subsequent life.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35
Collections: In Time’s Flow





	Memories Alight

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to track 2 of the fan album in time's flow, which you can listen to [here on bandcamp!](https://fe3hfm.bandcamp.com/album/in-times-flow)

Once upon a time, Sothis watched the world from above and thought _well that certainly looks interesting_ , and so the goddess descended from the heavens and lived upon the surface of the earth. The children she made from her own blood mingled with the humans who sprang from the land, and for a while, there was peace. 

Once upon a time, humans looked at the children of the goddess and feared their power, coveted their long lives, and a war burned the world. Fighting turned the forests to ash and trampled the fields to mud, and there were no more bright spring mornings or sunflowers or apple trees. But all things end, and one day there were no armies left to wage war. And so, in her mercy, the goddess Sothis restored life unto the land. Her power was vast but finite, used up in coaxing each buried seed back to life, and she retreated deep beneath the earth to rest. 

And once upon a time, there was betrayal. Sothis had nothing to warn of her enemies' approach, for who would dare storm the goddess’s own resting place? She had no time to awake from the bed that would become her tomb, for the sword carved through her skin before the invader’s torchlight could reach her eyes. 

Once upon a time, the goddess died. 

Sleep approaches in a cresting tide overtaking the world, rolling over and around Sothis in one perfect, weightless undertow. The goddess might have ignored its call, but not paired as it is with the point of a sword slipping feather-light through her earthly, too-human ribs.

Slumber always belonged to her, a warm blanket in which to wrap herself and restore the ruins of overextended power. A bed beneath the earth, darkness’s earnest embrace, the quiet of years alone. The slumber of a goddess, she learns, is different from sleep. Sleep creeps true and cold as the draining of her blood - power’s light and wisdom’s life - casts her into the dark beyond breath. 

Sothis expects oblivion. There has only ever been one goddess, one being who cloaked divine power in a living form, and why wouldn’t she expect crushing nonexistence? She hungers and tires as the humans do. She bleeds and breathes, cries and sleeps; she ought to die. Separated from herself, bone and blood and heart reforged as weapons, she ought to die.

She doesn’t expect the distant remembrance of living or the crude quelling of memory. She certainly does not expect her fading sense of the world’s dispersing power wafting through her deep and unrealizing dreams like apples plucked from their branches by early ice and left rotting in neat rows. It’s such a small, tidy thing to encapsulate the decay of death, unassuming, unexceptional, unremarkable. With each further hint of rot she drifts closer to eternity, but her entombed heart tethers her just beyond its reach. 

Alone, in the space between now and forever, Sothis drifts.

Two thousand years of loneliness - night didn't compare. Sleep didn’t compare. As a mortal, Sothis never visited the dark beneath the waters; perhaps those depths of lightless weight would compare. Regardless, she drifts until memory decays, until even the sweet scent of rot is beyond her senses, beyond her memory, light and life and joy stolen by time. 

But once upon a time, there was the warmth of a body with a stilling heartbeat, and Sothis opened eyes that were not hers and looked down at the little human thing she’d been gifted to. _You shall have to do,_ Sothis said to herself, the first coherent thought in a thousand years. She had no memory, no voice, no knowledge; but the breeze entering the courtyard carried the sweet scent of apple blossoms. 

She’s coaxed into the current of sleep again, but this time it’s a comfort rather than a terror; an insulating layer between her and the world, a helping hand and a promise. Sleep carries dreams now, visions of dark blood and cleansing rain, night and thunder. There’s _something else_ within them, still hidden from her reach, dormant power like smoldering leaves waiting for their moment to ignite the forest. 

One day the fire spreads; one day dreams meld back into reality, wrapping her in shifting sparks, building a home half-remembered inside her odd little host - grown now, carrying a sword, throwing her life away. Sothis kicks her feet atop her throne, surveys the sea and the sky and the plane of eternity, frowns slow and judgemental at the reckless little mortal standing before her. 

“And who might you be?” Sothis asks the being she snatched from certain death; her host, her body, the vessel of her heart. 

“Byleth.” An odd name, fitting for an odd person. Well, she would have to do. 

“What a strange name,” Sothis says. And the embers of power grow, consuming the underbrush left by a thousand years of sleep. The fire spreads, sparks leaping from the sky into the rolling waves of time, pushing back inevitability’s tide long enough to save two lives. “Well? You who bear the flames within, go forth.” 

Sothis grins to herself as she falls asleep this time, knowing she’ll wake again soon. She steps into a new life, intervenes at Byleth’s will and whim, pulling time to and fro to stop death after death. And every time someone speaks of _the goddess_ her awareness grows, the corners of faded memories entering her mind, power growing and fitting like a worn, reliable cloak. 

Once upon a time, there was a mercenary and a goddess. 

Once upon a time, they were trapped back into the darkness that Sothis had once escaped; inconvenient, but no threat to her existence. She would miss teasing the little mortal who bore her heart, but she would hardly die. Sothis stared down at her human host for the final time, coaxed the bright-hot embers of power into forest-fire life, shone and burned as she reached out to Byleth with everything she was. 

“I am the beginning.” Of life and breath and time; promise and power and blood. “What will you do?”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid)


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